The children arrived at ten. Forty of them, seven and eight years old, in Palace shirts that the club had provided, their faces painted red and blue, their voices at a volume that suggested the concept of "indoor voice" had been explained to them and rejected as irrelevant.
They spilled out of the Sprinter (Lorraine had driven them, the first official journey of the new vehicle, and she had reported to the teachers that "the heating works on both sides and I'm not crying, I've got something in my eye") and they stood in the car park and looked up at Selhurst Park with the particular, devastating wonder of children who are seeing something for the first time and who have not yet learned to be unimpressed.
